Parallel Universes

Yeah, OK. I don’t want to do this and you don’t want me to do this either, because today’s game was unpleasant and relentless. The only saving grace was Gary and Ron, long after any sensible person had fled for other channels, showing off their knowledge of former presidents: Ronnie went for William Taft’s post-White House career on the Supreme Court, Gary noted William Henry Harrison’s brief and star-crossed time in office, and then they both speculated about the truculent John Adams as a mascot. Even when the score’s a disaster, our announcers are so much better than anyone else’s that it’s amazing.

As the weekend’s dreams turned to dust, I kept thinking about that play in Friday night’s second game — of Justin Turner’s glove flip to Daniel Murphy, and Murph’s heave into the body of a startled Wilton Ramos. Nothing has gone right since then, and while I don’t mean to lay it on Murph, I keep thinking of the time-space continuum splitting at that point, and find myself wondering wistfully what’s going on down the other fork.

In some other universe, Murph nodded at Turner, took a breath, put Josh Satin in his crosshairs and completed the double play. Matt Harvey won 1-0, and Davey Johnson and the Nats spent too many of the next 20-odd hours explaining why they weren’t collapsing. The Mets took the field behind Dillon Gee on Saturday and survived his wildness and Lance Barksdale’s strike zone thanks to three home runs by David Wright, each of which just stayed fair. Then they walked onto the field today confident that the reeling Nationals had no interest in putting up a fight, against Carlos Torres or anybody else. They finished the weekend with the Phillies in the rearview mirror, the Nationals in their sights, the Marlins up next and the Braves … well, it’s too early to talk about it, but the Uptons and their pals are certainly visible up there at the head of the NL East train.

None of that happened, and what-ifs will kill you. But that universe sounds like a pretty awesome place to be.

jason,
sadly, yes, i bought into that cosmology too. the mets too often remind us that while false hope may be better than no hope at all, in the end, it’s still false.
now it’s miami. i shudder to think what might happen in the house of fish, especially with stanton awakened.

That second game. From the Murphy error to the wasting of numerous chances, they left 10 on base in a 2-1 game, to score is a game you look back on as one you should’ve won and won easily. Changed the tone of the series. Allowed the Nats to get up off the mat and deflated the Mets. Mets looked listless the remainder of the series.

Don’t want to make you feel any worse but tonight we play the Marlins.

Forget about how they’ve manhandled us this season to date. The Marlins are now hitting, having averaged 3.56 runs per game during their last 23 contests. That might not sound like much – but that includes those three straight shut outs. If we dismiss those, its 4.10 runs per game which is slightly above the league average. And their pitching now is about the league average.

And not to mention that they have been 27-22 over their last 49 games.

This is definitely a better team than we saw earlier this year – and that is even scarier.

Error Murphy, pop up Wright, pop up Lagares. Should have been a 2-0 CG win for Harvey.

I don’t understand how a team that can hit well enough to put a decent number of runners on base can then only manage pop ups and strike outs with runners in scoring position.

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